Almost blew out my laptop

July 4

Many of you know that I’m not fully confident about my technical skills. I joke that in technical communication, I’m low T/high C. That is certainly the case tonight. I slept for a few hours with the help of one bendryl, but woke up at around midnight to hear rain pattering the tin roof overhead. It was so peaceful for a moment. Then I heard the next-door bar’s music start to pound. Argh. It was not quite as loud as last night, but the bass feels like a second heartbeat running through me. I took a second Benadryl, turned on my iPod and stared at the ceiling through the mosquito net.

After an hour or so, as I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t sleep, I thought about my immediate worry: I’m having trouble recharging my laptop. I tried to recharge it at a coffee shop earlier, but it would start charging for a moment and then stop. After several attempts to make sure the problem was not due to some silly mistake like a loose cord, I concluded that something else was at play and put everything away and wrote instead in my notebook.

So tonight (and it is now this morning), I figured that since I couldn’t sleep, I should try to recharge the laptop in my hotel room. So here’s the set up: the only working outlet is in the bathroom, dangling from the wall. Also, there is water all over the floor, not right under the outlet area. I also have two electrical converters: one is a simple adapter from an American-style plug to a French-style plug; the other is a current converter with two settings, 50 watt and 1600 watt. The bathroom outlet has a ring around the holes so the current converter won’t fit in there.

Oh, and one more thing: I am a magnet for electrical troubles. If there’s one loose wire, I’ll end up getting lightly shocked. This happened when I used to stir something in my granma’s electric skillet and at the same time, lean against the edge of the kitchen counter, which had an aluminum piece along the top edge. It also happened in one house I owned: if I turned on a certain light switch without my shoes to ground me, I felt the strange tingling feeling of just a bit too much current running through me.

So coming back to the laptop very much in need of a charge, I first placed the physical converter in the outlet, then the current converter (set on 50 watts),then the laptop power cords. To support the weight, I tied a bandana around the whole thing and hung it on the corner of the mirror. It worked for a moment. It charged for about 30 seconds, and then stopped. I rechecked the cord connections. No good. It just wouldn’t charge. So…I thought maybe it needed more voltage.

Okay, tech friends, you can stop laughing.

Yes, I flicked the switch to 1600 watts and fired the whole thing up. It began to charge! Yay! I was so proud of myself. I even took a picture. I closed the cover and let it sleep.

After a few minutes, I thought hey, why not get some writing done? I have pages and pages to get from my notebook to Word to the blog (since I can’t get online very often or very cheaply, so I’m trying to pre-write blog entries and emails). I pulled over one of the room’s chairs, picked up the laptop and set it on my lap.

Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

I didn’t think too much about the stinging on my thigh, but my left hand was holding the laptop and was right against four ports. Wow. Then I noticed my right hand was slowly going numb.

I put the laptop down fast.

It didn’t take too long for my brain to kick in and all it said was, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Losing my laptop and all my work on it is not in the plan. I have my documents backed up, and I could probably recover my stuff. Thank goodness that Apple has my tunes online (priorities, priorities).

But buying a new laptop is not in the budget.

Very tenderly, I shut down the laptop and prayed that it would be okay. Then I disconnected the power cord from the computer. When I disconnected the current converter from the wall outlet, it was sizzling a little. After a few deep breaths, I turned on the laptop to see if it was fried. It seemed to be working, and I pulled up a couple of docs, one old and one new. Everything looked okay.

Whew.

Before I left home, the guy at Radio Shack told me that the laptop should have an auto-adjustment feature for different power sources for all over the world. I’m sad to say that I doubted him. Wherever you are, Radio Shack Guy, you were right. I was wrong.

It’s right there in the Appendix B of the user’s guide on the desktop, yet more proof that no one reads user manuals, even those who occasionally write them.

The correct equation: physical converter + regular laptop power cords = happiness

In the time it took to write this, I’m up to 93% charged. Now if I could just go to sleep.